Upcoming Sponsorship Opportunities

Corporate Support and Entertaining

Exhibition sponsorship is a creative way to achieve corporate goals for international, governmental, customer, or shareholder relations. We work closely with your corporation to customize a strategy for your particular needs. Exclusive sponsorship, partial sponsorship, and co-sponsorship are available for most exhibitions.

Pierre Bonnard: The Late Interiors

January–April 2009

While recent exhibitions devoted to Pierre Bonnard have articulated his role in modern art as a complex and inventive painter of the human figure, no study to date has focused attention on his still-life painting. Bonnard sketched and painted still-life objects throughout his career. This exhibition will address the late paintings made in Le Cannet, a hill town overlooking the Mediterranean where the artist settled in 1931 with his wife, model, and muse, Marthe de Méligny. The selection will include some forty paintings and related drawings, stunning metaphors of domesticity where raking light and a shimmering palette transform random objects into pulsating color. The accompanying catalogue will discuss the still life as critical to an understanding of Bonnard’s oeuvre and, more expansively, consider the artist’s contribution to the rich historical narrative of the still life in France, from Chardin to Cézanne. Accompanied by a catalogue.

Exhibition sponsorship: $250,000 for exclusive corporate sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum; partial sponsorship also available.

The Pictures Generation, 1974–1984

April–August 2009

This will be the first major museum exhibition to focus exclusively on the group of artists known as "The Pictures Generation"—among them Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, Sherrie Levine, Louise Lawler, Robert Longo, David Salle, and Matt Mullican. Born into the rapidly expanding media culture of postwar America and educated in the strategies of recent Minimal and Conceptual art, this loosely knit group of artists working in New York in the late 1970s and 1980s created the most seminal and influential works of the late twentieth century. Their overarching subject was imagery itself—how pictures of all kinds not only depict but also shape reality—and the exhibition will include paintings and sculpture, drawings and prints, photography, film, video, and installation. Accompanied by a catalogue.

Exhibition sponsorship: $500,000 for exclusive corporate sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum; partial sponsorship also available.

Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective

May–August 2009

This exhibition will herald the celebrations marking the centenary of the artist's birth in 1909 and will be the first major exhibition of Bacon's work seen in London or New York in more than twenty years. Francis Bacon (British, 1909–1992) is considered one of the most important painters of the twentieth century. This innovative exhibition will present Bacon's career in its entirety, featuring his most significant works and focusing on the key subjects and themes that run through his extraordinary creative output, as well as offering new and original insights into the work. Bacon's oeuvre was dominated by depictions of the human body, exposed and emotionally charged. These visually arresting works will be interwoven—just as they were when they were first made—with representations of animals and visceral landscapes. Never-before-seen works and archival material from the Francis Bacon Estate will also be featured, shedding new light on the artist's career and working practices. Accompanied by a catalogue. Other venues: Tate Britain, London (September 2008–January 2009); Museo del Prado, Madrid (February–April 2009).

Exhibition sponsorship: $1 million for exclusive corporate sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum; partial sponsorship also available.

Pen and Parchment: Drawing in the Middle Ages

June–August 2009

For hundreds of years before the Old Masters, medieval artists explored and tested the medium of drawing, producing whimsical sketches, intriguing graphic treatises, and finished drawings of marvelous refinement. Gathering some seventy works from the ninth century to the early fourteenth, this exhibition is the first to celebrate the quality and range of drawings from the Middle Ages. Early maps, artists' sketchbooks, and masterfully decorated manuscripts—rarely seen objects borrowed from European and American libraries and museums—will appear alongside related works in ivory, enamel, and stained glass. Together they demonstrate the critical role of graphic images in the creative and intellectual life of the Middle Ages. Accompanied by a catalogue.

Exhibition sponsorship: $500,000 for exclusive corporate sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum; partial sponsorship also available.

Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul

June–September 2009

Ancient Afghanistan—at the crossroads of major trade routes and the focus of invasions by great powers and nomadic migrations—was home to one of the most complex, rich, and original civilizations in the continent of Asia. This exhibition will celebrate the unique role of Afghanistan as a center for both the reception of diverse cultural elements and the creation of original styles of art—extending from the Bronze Age into the Kushan period. It will also commemorate the heroic rescue of the heritage of one of the world's great civilizations, whose precious treasures were thought to have been destroyed. Among the highlights of the exhibition are gold vessels from the Khosh Tapa hoard; superb works and architectural elements from Ai Khanoum; extraordinary turquoise-encrusted gold jewelry and ornaments from the tombs at Tela Tepe; and sculptural masterpieces in ivory, plaster medallions, and Roman glass from Begram. Accompanied by a catalogue. Other venues: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (May–September 2008); Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (October 2008–January 2009); Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (February–May 2009); Kunst und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn (October 2009–June 2010).

Exhibition sponsorship: $750,000 for exclusive corporate sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum; partial sponsorship also available.

The Art of Illumination: The Limbourg Brothers and the Belles Heures of Jean de France, Duc de Berry

September 2009–January 2010

An exhibition of all the illuminated pages of the Belles Heures painted by the Limbourg Brothers in 1405–1408/09 for Jean de France, Duc de Berry. Works of art in other media acquired by the duke and other Valois princes in the opening decade of the fifteenth century will also be included. Accompanied by a monograph.

Exhibition sponsorship: $250,000 for exclusive corporate sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum; partial sponsorship also available.

American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915

October 2009–January 2010

This major loan exhibition of about 105 judiciously selected oils by well-known and less familiar artists will expand the chronological and thematic scope of scholarship on American genre painting. The leading figures, ranging from John Singleton Copley to John Sloan, will each be represented by several examples. The display will include early American portraits, which have not heretofore been read for their narrative content, as well as American Impressionist and Ashcan School paintings, which are not usually studied as genre scenes. The exhibition will offer an extensive and nuanced consideration of all these works in historical and cultural context. It will address each picture in light of both its subject matter and its approach to narrative, examining composition, gestures, paint handling, and other formal traits, as well as the characters depicted. The exhibition will also reveal how each work responds to a patron's expectations and an artist's desires to serve a particular audience; how it encodes changes in taste and in relationships between European prototypes and American products; and how it reflects events and trends in American art, life, and history, as well as evolving concepts of American identity. Accompanied by a catalogue. Other venue: Los Angeles County Museum of Art (spring 2010).

Exhibition sponsorship: $1 million for exclusive corporate sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum; partial sponsorship also available.

Arts of the Samurai: Japanese Arms and Armor from the Heian to the Edo Period

October 2009–January 2010

The first comprehensive exhibition devoted to the arts of the samurai. Arms and armor will be the principal focus, bringing together more than two hundred of the finest examples of armor, swords and sword mountings, archery equipment and firearms, equestrian equipment, banners, surcoats, and related accessories. The majority of the works date from the late Heian period, in the twelfth century, when the samurai emerged as the dominant political and military force in Japanese society, through the Edo period, ending in 1868, when the feudal system was abolished and western customs adapted. The daily life of the samurai will also be examined through objects associated with No drama and the tea ceremony, as well as paintings, calligraphy, and painted scrolls. All of the objects, including more than twenty National Treasures, come from collections in Japan. Accompanied by a catalogue.

Exhibition sponsorship: $500,000 for partial sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum.

Duncan Phyfe

November 2009–March 2010

Referred to during his lifetime as the "United States Rage," Duncan Phyfe (1768–1854) remains to this day America's best-known cabinetmaker. This will be the first major retrospective on Phyfe since 1922, when the Metropolitan mounted a monographic show on the cabinetmaker and his work. The exhibition will cover the full chronological sweep of Phyfe's distinguished career and include his earliest and best-known furniture based on the public designs of Thomas Sheraton, as well as work from the middle and later stages of his career when he adopted the richer "archaeological" antique style of the 1820s and a refined plain Grecian style based on French Restauration prototypes. Accompanied by a catalogue. Other venue: Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (spring 2010).

Exhibition sponsorship: $250,000 for exclusive corporate sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum; partial sponsorship also available.

Bronzino Drawings

January–April 2010

The exhibition will illustrate for the first time nearly all the known drawings by or attributed to the leading Italian Mannerist artist, Agnolo Bronzino. Bronzino was among the leading Florentine painters and draftsmen of the sixteenth century. This will be the first monographic exhibition of his drawings. The exhibition will contain approximately fifty drawings. Accompanied by a catalogue.

Exhibition sponsorship: $1 million for exclusive corporate sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum; partial sponsorship also available.

Victorian Photocollage

February–June 2010

Sixty years ahead of the avant-garde, aristocratic Victorian women were already experimenting with photocollage. The compositions they made with photographs and watercolors are whimsical and fantastical, combining human heads and animal bodies, placing people into imaginary landscapes, and morphing faces into common household objects. With sharp wit and dramatic shifts of scale akin to those Alice experienced in Wonderland, these images stand the rather serious conventions of photography in the 1860s and 1870s on their heads. Such images, often made for albums, reveal the educated minds as well as accomplished hands of their makers, as they take on new theories of evolution, the changing role of photography, and the strict conventions of aristocratic society. Although these photocollages may seem wonderfully strange to us now, they are perfectly in keeping with a Victorian sensibility that embraced juxtaposition and variety, science and fantasy. Together they provide a fascinating window into the creative possibilities of photography in the Victorian era as well as enduring inspiration for photographic experimentation today. Accompanied by a catalogue. Other venue: Art Institute of Chicago (fall 2010).

Exhibition sponsorship: $200,000 for exclusive corporate sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum; partial sponsorship also available.

Painting in Siena in the Age of Duccio

Spring 2010

Between 1280 and 1348, Western painting was redefined by two geniuses: Giotto, from Florence, and Duccio, from Siena. This exhibition celebrates the golden age initiated by Duccio and the generation of painters who came after him, most notably Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti and Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi. It will also explore relations between painting and sculpture and painting and manuscript illumination. Accompanied by a catalogue. Other venue: Musée du Louvre (dates to be determined).

Exhibition sponsorship: $1 million for exclusive corporate sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum; partial sponsorship also available.

Richard Serra: The Graphic Work

September–December 2010

Richard Serra (b. 1939) is widely considered the foremost American sculptor of our era. Although primarily associated with his large-scale, public projects, Serra has produced a significant body of graphic work with similar interest and intensity over the past three decades. Serra’s prints, which number well over 160 works in lithograph, screenprint, and etching, derive in large part as an extension of his drawing practice and enable him to address ongoing aesthetic and intellectual concerns within a wholly different medium. The proposed exhibition will be a selective retrospective of Serra’s graphic work from 1972 to the present. The accompanying catalogue will update the existing catalogue raisonné of Serra’s prints published in 1999.

Exhibition sponsorship: $250,000 for exclusive corporate sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum; partial sponsorship also available.

From Xanadu to Dadu—The World of Khubilai Khan

September 2010–January 2011

This exhibition will cover the period from 1214, the year of Khubilai Khan's birth, to 1368, the year of the fall of the Yuan dynasty in China, which he founded. It will feature every art form, including paintings, sculpture, gold and silver, textiles, ceramics, lacquer, and other decorative arts, religious and secular. Special sections will be devoted to the capital cities of Shangdu (Xanadu) and Dadu (present-day Beijing). Accompanied by a catalogue.

Exhibition sponsorship: $1.5 million for exclusive corporate sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum; partial sponsorship also available.

Man, Myth, and Sensual Pleasures: Jan Goessart's Renaissance

October 2010–January 2011

Jan Gossaert is the Netherlandish artist most often credited with successfully assimilating Italian Renaissance style into northern European art of the early sixteenth century. He was among the first northern artists to travel to Rome to make copies after antique sculpture, and to bring historical and mythological subjects with erotic nude figures into the mainstream of Netherlandish painting. This international loan exhibition will bring together Gossaert's paintings, drawings, and prints and place them in the context of the art that influenced his transformation from Late Gothic Mannerism to the new Romanism. It will also show Gossaert's profound impact on Netherlandish painters such as Heemskerck, Lucas van Leyden, Van Hemessen, Coecke van Aelst, and his rival Van Orley. Accompanied by a catalogue. Other venue: National Gallery of Art, London (spring 2011).

Exhibition sponsorship: $500,000 for exclusive corporate sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum; partial sponsorship also available.

John Baldessari

October 2010–January 2011

Although Baldessari has been very influential among artists across America and Europe, his work has not been exhibited very often in New York. This retrospective will survery his career, from early photo-text pieces through the combined photographs, to the over-painted work of the 1990s, and his most recent work. It will include paintings, photographs, sculpture, and installations. Accompanied by a catalogue. Other venues: Tate Modern, London (dates to be determined), and Los Angeles County Museum of Art (dates to be determined).

Exhibition sponsorship: $500,000 for exclusive corporate sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum; partial sponsorship also available.

The Artistic Furniture of Charles Rohlfs

October 2010–January 2011

This is a small, scholarly focused exhibition of about forty pieces of the distinctive furniture produced by the workshop of Charles Rohlfs (1853–1936) in Buffalo, New York. The works exhibit the most vitality and movement of any produced during the Arts and Crafts movement in America. Strongly influenced by the decorative arts of Europe, Rohlfs' inventive furniture forms demonstrate highly skilled carving and innovative design. The exhibition will draw from many public and private collections. Accompanied by a catalogue. Other venues: Milwaukee Art Museum (summer 2008); Dallas Museum of Art (fall 2009); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (spring 2010); Huntington Library, San Marino (summer 2010).

Exhibition sponsorship: $250,000 for exclusive corporate sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum; partial sponsorship also available.

Cézanne's Card Players

February–May 2011

The exhibition seeks to reunite for the first time the works from the series of Cézanne's card player canvases together with their associated oil studies and drawings. Also included will be a carefully selected group of Cézanne's closely related paintings of peasants, several of which depict the same local models who appear in the card player compositions. Accompanied by a catalogue. Other venue: The Cortauld Gallery (fall 2011).

Exhibition sponsorship: $500,000 for exclusive corporate sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum; partial sponsorship also available.

Rooms with Views: The Open Window in the 19th Century

February–May 2011

The exhibition focuses on the romantic motif of the open window as first captured by German, Danish, French, and Russian artists around 1810–20. These works include hushed sparse rooms showing contemplative figures, studios with artists at work, and window views as sole motif. The exhibition will feature some thirty oils and twenty works on paper by, among others, C. D. Friedrich, C. G. Carus, G. F. Kersting, Adolph Menzel, C. W. Eckersberg, Martinus Rørbye, Jean Alaux, Léon Cogniert, and F. P. Tolstoi. Most loans will come from museums in Germany, Denmark, France, Austria, Switzerland, Russia, and some from museums in the United States. Accompanied by a catalogue.

Exhibition sponsorship: $750,000 for exclusive corporate sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum; partial sponsorship also available.

The Age of Warhol

Spring 2011

For decades, commentators have observed that Andy Warhol’s influence is dominant in contemporary art. This exhibition will be an in-depth examination of the nature and extent of the Warhol sensibility, organized around themes that will be delineated by several of Warhol’s works, along with objects by other artists who have worked in his wake. The aim is not only to show direct influence but also to indicate how an artist may have developed Warhol’s examples into new areas and accomplishments. Accompanied by a catalogue.

Exhibition sponsorship: $750,000 for exclusive corporate sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum; partial sponsorship also available.

African Portraiture: Representing the Individual

October 2011–January 2012

The art of capturing a human likeness in painting, sculpture, and photography has been a universal objective of artists throughout the ages and across cultures. Artists in different world traditions have developed their own conventions for depicting individuals. While sculptors in hundreds of distinct African centers across sub-Saharan Africa have historically focused on the human figure as their primary subject, their achievements in this realm remain poorly understood by non-specialists. This exhibition will present some of the most sublime creations by African masters spanning the twelfth through nineteenth centuries in a range of media from fired clay, cast brass, and carved wood. These major landmarks of African art will be examined closely within the broader context of the Metropolitan’s encyclopedia collections in terms that speak importantly to Africa's distinctive place in an essential arena of artistic representation. Accompanied by a catalogue.

Exhibition sponsorship: $500,000 for exclusive corporate sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum; partial sponsorship also available.

The Renaissance Portrait: From Masaccio to Botticelli

January–April 2012

It has been said that the Renaissance witnessed the rediscovery of the individual. Certainly portraiture assumed a new importance, whether it was to record the features of a family member for future generations, celebrate a prince or warrior, extol the beauty of a woman, or make possible the exchange among friends of a likeness. This exhibition will bring together paintings, medals, and sculpture that testify to the new vogue for and uses of portraiture in fifteenth-century Italy. Accompanied by a catalogue. Other venue: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin (summer 2011).

Exhibition sponsorship: $500,000 for exclusive sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum; partial sponsorship also available.

Gertrude Stein and Modern Art: Cézanne, Matisse, Picasso and the Stein Family

February–May 2012

Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo and Michael Stein, and Michael’s wife Sarah Stein were important early patrons of modern art in Paris in the first decades of the twentieth century. The Steins developed lasting friendships with Picasso and Matisse, in particular, and the salons that they hosted at 27 rue de Fleurus and 58 rue Madame are now legendary. The exhibition will focus on Picasso and Matisse in depth, as well as contemporaries including Bonnard, Cézanne, Denis, Gris, Laurencin, Lipchitz, Nadelman, Picabia, Renoir, Vallotton, and others. The exhibition will demonstrate the importance of the Steins’ patronage to the artists of their day and how they disseminated a new standard of taste for modern art, in particular for the work of Matisse and Picasso. It will also illuminate the broader cultural and artistic contexts in which these works were first made and acquired. As such, the exhibition will build upon MoMA’s groundbreaking 1970 exhibition Four Americans in Paris: The Collections of Gertrude Stein and Her Family. Accompanied by a catalogue. Other venues: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (summer 2011); Galleries nationales du Grand Palais, Paris (fall 2011).

Exhibition sponsorship: $1 million for exclusive corporate sponsorship at the Metropolitan Museum; partial sponsorship also available.

For More Information

For more information about the benefits of exhibition sponsorship, please call the Development Office at 212-650-2390, fax us at 212-396-5040, or email sponsor.exhibitions@metmuseum.org.

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